Making an effort to post a review every Friday!

This one is going to be a little different. I seem to have decided that June is going to be mythology-fiction month as it is my birthday month and as I enjoy mythology. Tomorrow, in fact, is my birthday, so I’ve made more work for myself. I’m going to review two books. One I will give a good review—a spectacular review! I really liked it! And one I will give a bad review. Both books are by Stephen Fry.

Heroes, by Stephen Fry, and Mythos, by Stephen Fry.

I was given Heroes as a gift and I read it out loud to my children. Generally speaking I don’t enjoy reading out loud to children. They stop you. They ask a lot of questions. There’s a good deal of ‘wait, can we actually read something else’, ‘I need a drink’, ‘what were you saying, I saw a particularly interesting bug,’ and ‘HELP! A BUG!’

If it’s difficult to wade my way through Pete the Cat, which is ten pages long and rather easy reading; you can imagine that reading a chapter book would be tortuous. Heroes, however, I read cover

to cover– to my kids.

I love the framing, the presentation. There were stories which I was less familiar with, stories which I hadn’t known –which I then obnoxiously related those new factoids to people around me, eager to show off some detail or otherwise retell a story like a small child showing off their bedroom to house guests.

I enjoyed this book, I enjoyed the stories immensely. I like an anthology from time to time, and I liked how legends were connected and presented. A text book, nearly, without the stuffiness of academia. It was intelligent, easily read, easily understood, presented exquisitely.

Mythos was a different story. I bought Mythos on the heels of reading Heroes, with the blind confidence of ‘ah, this is more of that stuff that I like’.

I generally make a point of not reviewing things I don’t like, but I want to do a bit of a post mortem—because at this exact moment, I can’t tell you why I didn’t like it.

That’s not very flattering to me as a person who analyzes and writes about things daily.

I like Stephen Fry. I generally trust Stephen Fry. I don’t know that I would hand him a baby because I don’t know that he would be comfortable with that, but I haven’t ruled it out. If Stephen Fry is presenting a documentary or waxing poetic and I say, ah, yes, Stephen Fry. My good friend, Stephen Fry.

I like mythology. I liked other books by Stephen Fry about mythology. I was willing to read them out loud to small children, which is the equivalent of nailing jello to a herd of cats.

I just could not bring myself to like this book.

I am so sorry, my good personal friend Stephen Fry. I am truly baffled.

I learned a few things from it. I repeated factoids, as I am wont to do. I took in and absorbed information. I made a casual reference to Ouranos in regular conversation, which is not easy for most people. What am I doing wrong? Why don’t I like this book? Why have I failed you, Stephen?

Is it something I ate?

Do I need to adopt a new technique, ritual? I will admit, and I think this is worth talking about—I try to read a book a week. I have a goal of reading a book a week. But most often, I read three books in a week and other weeks I lie on the floor and have staring at the ceiling time.

It’s entirely possible I was just burnt out.

I want to revisit it. I want to challenge myself to revisit it—because Stephen Fry is an amazing story teller. But perhaps right now it is just time to stare at the ceiling.